How I Earned 125K Credit Card Points from Shopping Portals

I have been pleasantly surprised to see how quickly you can rack up points through shopping portals, such as, Rakuten and Capital One Offers.

In the past three years, I have earned a total of 125K transferrable points - 100K Membership Rewards points from Rakuten and 25K Capital One miles from Capital One Offers. All I had to do was click through to the retailer's website from these portals, instead of going to their website from Google Search.

Let me walk you through a few big examples.

Earning 100K from Rakuten

Rakuten gives you multiple ways to convert your earned cash back into travel rewards:

American Express Membership Rewards (MR) Points

Bilt Points

Until early last year, I was converting all my Rakuten cash back to American Express MR points, but recently I switched to earning Bilt points instead.

Rakuten also recently launched the Rakuten American Express card which gives +4X points if you use their credit card. This almost acts as a cheat code to rack up Rakuten points.

Let me walk you through an example:

You want to purchase a TV for $700 from Best Buy

Rakuten has 4X on all Best Buy purchases

You use Rakuten credit card to get an extra 4X

Points earned = 700 * 8 = 5,600 Bilt points

Valuing Bilt points at 3CPP, that's $168

Or, a 24% discount on your $700 TV purchase

Even without the Rakuten card, you can earn as much as 4,200 points if you use a 2X earning card, such as the Bilt Palladium or Capital One Venture X card.

Over the last few years, I have made few targeted purchases that brought in most of my Rakuten earnings:

Opening a Chime Bank Account - 25,000 Bilt points

Opening a SoFi Bank Account - 25,000 Bilt points

2-year NordVPN plan - 10,000 Bilt points

That's 60K Bilt points, or 60% of my Rakuten lifetime earnings.

You can earn an additional 10,000 Bilt or AMEX points if you sign up for the Rakuten American Express card and spend approximately $1,000 in 3 months.

Earning 25K from Capital One Offers

Switching gears a little bit, let's talk about my second favorite shopping portal - Capital One Offers.

Unlike Rakuten, Capital One Offers is extremely underrated and ripe with misconceptions. I will clear one of the most common misconception - no, you don't need to use a Capital One credit card when purchasing.

As long as you click through to the retailer's website from Capital One Offers portal, you will earn points on your purchase.

Let me walk you through an example:

You want to purchase a TV for $700 from Best Buy

Capital One Offers has 6X on all Best Buy purchases

You use American Express Business Gold that earns 4X on Best Buy purchases

Points earned = 700 * 10 = 7,000 points (4,200 Bilt points from Rakuten + 2,800 MR points)

Valuing Bilt and MR points at 3CPP, that's $210

Or, a 30% discount on your $700 TV purchase

Capital One Offers, unlike Rakuten, does not have those enormous offers - 25K for opening bank accounts, etc.

Instead, they often provide larger multipliers on everyday retail brands, such as, Uniqlo, GAP, Banana Republic, Nike, Adidas, etc.

Over the years, some of my best purchases were:

Apple MacBook - $2,400 purchase earned 5,000 Capital One Miles

Macy's - $160 watch purchase earned 3,000 Capital One Miles

Singapore Airlines - $800 flight purchase earned 1,600 Capital One Miles

More than 90% of the time, I can find the retailer I want in Capital One Miles, giving at least an extra +1X points. It's equivalent to earning 3X on all online purchases, assuming I use a 2X-earning card like the Bilt Palladium or Capital One Venture X to purchase.

The Winning Strategy

First and foremost, start any online shopping journey from Savewise.

Savewise lists earning potential from all available shopping portals - not only Rakuten and Capital One Offers, but less common ones, such as, airlines portals, Chase shopping portal, Rove portal, etc.

You can sort by earning potential then click through from the portal that has the highest multiplier.

Next step is to make sure you use the right credit card. As a general rule of thumb, online purchases are non-category spend, so make sure to use a catch-all credit card that earns 2X on "everything else". Some notable examples include - Capital One Venture X, Bilt Palladium, Citi Double Cash and American Express Blue Business Plus.

With this strategy you will guarantee earning the highest number of points for all online purchases. There's another trick to achieve similar points earning capability for in-store purchases, but that's for a later blog post.

Thank you for reading!